Districts protest: Our schools aren’t failing

Because most Washington school districts don’t have 100 percent of their students passing state math and reading tests, the federal No Child Left Behind law says they must send letters to families explaining why.

But the districts don’t have to like it and 28 school superintendents have jointly written a second letter they will send along with the first, which explains why they think their schools are doing much better than the No Child letters make it seem.

“Some of our state’s and districts’ most successful and highly recognized schools are now being labeled ‘failing’ by an antiquated law that most educators and elected officials — as well as the U.S. Department of Education — acknowledge isn’t working,” the cover letter states.

The federal education law, also known as No Child Left Behind, is long overdue for a rewrite in the U.S. Congress, where Republicans and Democrats agree that it’s not working, but disagree about how to fix it.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration granted most states a waiver from some of its requirements in exchange for adopting certain reforms, including the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations, a move some think should be challenged in federal court.

Washington became the first state in the countryto lose its waiverin April because it does not mandate districts to use student scores as part of judging how well teachers are doing their jobs. That meant that the letters, which Washington schools haven’t had to send for a few years, now must go to parents.

The federal government has said that it’s important to notify parents about the reasons a school is judged sub par, what it’s doing to improve and how parents can get involved. Some schools will be required to notify parents if their children are eligible for outside tutoring.

Seattle, which did not sign the joint letter, is seeking reinstatement of the waiver for its own schools, arguing that its unique teacher evaluation system, negotiated with the teachers’ union, meets the federal requirements.

“We are still waiting to hear about our waiver request and didn’t think it was appropriate for us to sign on with the other districts at this point,” said district spokeswoman Lesley Rogers. “We certainly support the sentiments in the letter.”

The letters must be sent 14 days before school starts, which means Kent will be sending them out on Thursday and including the joint cover letter.

“While we are required to do this, our school district and our schools are not failing,” said Kent superintendent Edward Lee Vargas. “What we really need is for Congress to act to reauthorize this bill. It’s out of date and imposing this requirement is really unfair to the community and the hard work of our teachers and parents and administrators.”

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If you were in charge of crafting a letter to parents about the loss of the No Child Left Behind waiver, what would it say? Tell us in the comments section.

Stories in the series

When tackling the topic of student discipline, some of the country’s toughest schools have done a turnaround. Instead of focusing on rules broken, they now ask kids to confront themselves. The result? Fewer suspensions and new perspective on the point of school itself. Read the story →

It stands to reason: Kick troubled students out of school and they often come back even worse. The Kent School District is trying to tackle this national problem by overhauling the way it handles discipline. But its answers spark even more questions. Read the story →

In an idea borrowed from college athletics, the University of Washington boosts promising engineering students — many of them women and minorities — with an extra year of academic work. Read the story →

Boosting the quality of preschool in Seattle could help children, and the city as a whole. A number of studies, including one from the ’60s, establish that potential. But there is no guarantee of success. Read the story →

Universal, free preschool in Tulsa, Okla., has produced results attracting national attention, and could be a blueprint for Seattle. But after 16 years the long-term outcomes raise almost as many questions as they answer. Read the story →

Communication failures both within Seattle Public Schools and with parents of children with disabilities continue to undermine the district’s efforts to fix longstanding problems in special education. Read the story →

A new focus on individualized advice and counseling, boosted by software tools, is helping hundreds more students earn degrees and certificates each year at Walla Walla Community College. Read the story →

The path to college often leaves disadvantaged students behind. Two unusual nonprofits, one based in Seattle, have helped vault thousands of low-income students onto university campuses. Read the story →

In an attempt to add depth to the curriculum in America's most popular advanced high-school courses, some local teachers threw out most of their lectures and replaced them with a series of projects. Results so far are encouraging. Read the story →

Western Washington University college students are working as mentors, tutors and role models for thousands of K-12 students in and around Bellingham. The goal: convince them that college should be part of their educational trajectory. Read the story →

Kent educators combed through transcripts and discovered 2,600 young people in their district without any kind of diploma or credential. Enter iGrad, a program linking dropouts with college, that has been flooded with kids who want a second chance. Read the story →

A community group in northwest Chicago has turned hundreds of hesitant parents into capable classroom helpers, role models and leaders by tapping into strengths many don't realize they have. Read the story →

Missing just a few days of class in sixth grade can predict whether you'll graduate from high school. That research powers a national anti-dropout effort that's making a difference at Seattle's Aki Kurose and Denny International middle schools. Read the story →

For years, students at White Center Heights Elementary logged some of the lowest test scores in King County. Then teachers tried something new, and the numbers soared by double-digits after just one year. So what happened, and could it be replicated elsewhere? Read the story →

About the authors

John Higgins is one of Education Lab's reporters. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2012 to 2013.

Katherine Long has been a reporter for The Seattle Times since 1990, focusing for the past three years on higher ed, with stories that have ranged from the complexities of prepaid tuition programs to nontraditional ways to earn a degree.

Claudia Rowe joined The Seattle Times’ reporting staff in 2013. She has written about education for The New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, among other publications.

Leah Todd is an education reporter at The Times. She previously covered education for the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming.

Mike Siegel has been a news photographer at the Seattle Times since 1987. His photography was used in a series titled "Methadone and the Politics of Pain," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for investigative reporting.

Linda Shaw is The Times’ education editor. Previously, she covered public education as a reporter at The Seattle Times for more than two decades. Her coverage has won numerous national and local awards and honors.

Caitlin Moran is community engagement editor for Education Lab. She came to The Times from Patch, where she spent three years managing hyperlocal news websites on the Eastside.

About Solutions Journalism Network

The Education Lab project is being done with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network. SJN is a non-profit organization created to legitimize and spread the practice of solutions journalism: rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.